


After London

by myystic (neoinean)



Category: Spooks | MI-5
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Retirement, Spies, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-08
Updated: 2010-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-13 14:05:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/138192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neoinean/pseuds/myystic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are worse retirements.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After London

**Author's Note:**

  * For [My_Young_Friend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/My_Young_Friend/gifts).



_Widdale, Yorkshire  
2023_   


Sometimes it really does amaze him, that for all the many and varied ways the world has changed in the comparatively short span of years that he has walked upon it, still so many things have somehow managed to remain the same as they were when he first knew them. The sky, despite all the environmentalist doomsayers’ warnings, is still blue; the grass, despite all the radical conservationists’ nightmares, is still green, the wilderness still wild.

Well, as wild as the dales have ever been, anyway, these last few hundred years.

And true, there are certain things he misses -- his morning coffee, a well-cooked steak, the chiming of Big Ben -- but even these once-treasured staples of his life he has learned to cope without. Some more easily than others, he will admit, but still he finds himself coping, just the same.

Maybe that’s what amazes him the most of all.

He’d always liked to consider himself adaptable -- couldn’t not be, not in his job -- and if he hadn’t already been full up on the art of compromise when he walked in the door -- couldn’t not have been; couldn’t very well have got so far if he wasn’t -- then he knows he’d more than made up for it by the time he walked back out again. In government, in management, in politics -- hell, in all that cloak and dagger nonsense he’d once thought he’d been so good at -- those who can’t think on their feet are often the ones who find themselves knocked clean off them. And far too many of them never get back up again.

And so he copes.

It wasn’t easy at first. Hell, _no one_ had it easy at first, but after the dust settled -- metaphorically speaking -- and everyone suddenly found themselves on the other side of that mad scramble, suddenly caught themselves looking back and wondering how and why and _what the fuck_ , well the ones who made it were the ones who realized that the act of picking up the pieces wasn’t so much about cleaning up after the end as it was about laying the stones for a new beginning. Sometimes, when the rug gets pulled out from underneath your feet, when the world you’ve built for yourself starts crumbling down around your ears as your life starts to slide suddenly, irreparably sideways, well any old spook should know enough to turn into the bloody skid and leave off the brakes until you’re back on solid ground. Just because solid ground has become rather a precious commodity of late, well that hardly changes the name of the game. Or the rules that go along with it. Rules that any old spook should keep as a reference because you can’t very well tie a line in bowline knots if you don’t know _exactly_ where it is, now can you.

So yes, he copes.

In point of fact, he copes quite well.

Though yes, of course he misses London, too. It goes without saying that all of them miss London, so naturally London is one of those things they all go without saying, more often than not.

 _A lot_ more often than not.

At first it was voluntary. While the shit was still busy conferencing with the fan the lot them were still far too focused on the future, on planning the next move, on surviving through the next bloody sunset to bother with reminiscence, or navel gazing, or whatever the fuck all comes with looking back instead of forward. And since survival is rather an ongoing need, not one of them noticed when conscious choice crossed over into unthinking habit. Or if they did notice, they didn’t say.

 _Couldn’t_ say. It had become habit, after all.

Then like the tide, the urgency at last began to recede. (Harry could tell you, down to the hour, exactly how long it took, but he won’t. He doesn’t have to. It’s common knowledge.) Finally they stopped thinking day to day and started planning week to week, month to month. Season to season. Finally, _finally_ they started to see a light at the end of the tunnel that for once was not in fact attached to the proverbial oncoming train, and when somewhere down along the track they realized that they weren’t just staying alive, but rather that they were _living_ too, besides--

Well.

They’re spooks. They don’t exactly break their habits easily. Not when those habits are part and parcel of _why_ they survived in the first place.

And so they still don’t speak of London.

For some of them it’s _won’t_ ; they _won’t_ talk about it, not with anyone. Not even with the ones who shared the whole wretched experience with them. Harry understands that; there are a lot of things in his past that he won’t talk about, either. And then there are those who _don’t_ , they _don’t_ talk about it, especially to anyone who’d the singular misfortune of sharing the next seat in the devil’s handcart. Harry understands that, too. He doesn’t mention Beth in front of Dimitri, and he doesn’t mention Lucas, _ever_ , so yes. He understands.

Sometimes all too well.

Spooks, like addicts (and hell if there isn’t a lot of mileage to be had in _that_ comparison, but if the tumblers fit...) need to justify their habits, need to be able to rationalize away all the choices they have made, good or ill, so they can still catch their own eye in the mirror each morning without flinching. Harry gets that. He accepts it, and he does not judge because there is no greater understanding than the weight of empathy, and fuck if it all hadn’t been (or isn’t still) his own life, too.

Sometimes though, the silence gets to him, he will admit. Hell, sometimes he _wants_ to talk about London, to take a little mental stroll back through what no one would be foolish enough to call his glory days. While he doesn’t miss the traffic, or the Tube, or those idiot messengers on their ridiculous motorbikes, he does miss stopping for tea in quiet shops, eating fried fish wrapped in _faux_ newsprint with chips dribbled in vinegar, buying the Sunday paper from the newsagent down the street -- and the accompanying rush of emotional vertigo whenever he saw the government’s well-meaning lies writ large across the headlines. And true, sometimes he’s still surprised with just how much he _doesn’t_ miss that government, it still doesn’t change the fact of just how much he misses its people.

Oh, sweet Christ, does he miss its people.

Because a lot of them were _his_ people, too.

He keeps a roster in his head, comrades-in-arms that he’s outlived. Those he’d trained with, those he’d served with, friends and rivals and even a few whose only saving grace was the patriotism they shared (Her Majesty’s own trained monkeys, all; hip-hip hoo-bloody- _rah_ ). It’s a long list, but not as long as others’ he could name (but won’t; and thank-you, habit, once again), and fuck if Harry doesn’t know those names are damned well worth their weight in a top-shelf scotch to be doled out in upraised glasses, come Remembrance Day. Once upon a time, they had been. Of course, in that same once upon a time there was still scotch enough to drink with.

It hurts, sometimes, remembering those he’d lost Before, but that at least is an old, familiar ache. Worse now is remembering the people he’d just lost touch with, the ones whose fate he simply _doesn’t know_ \-- and never will. That’s become its own list, too, and if he were a praying man those names would hear his prayers the most. But he’s not, and nor is Ruth, and the occasional walk along the village’s Memorial Garden is how they both make do. How they _all_ make do, he supposes, because he knows they all have been there and more than once, and not just for the yearly re-dedication.

(At its heart, and wreathed in poppies, lies a mismatched collection of remains scrounged up from the bottom of the Wensley Channel. Though just _where_ Dimitri found the poppy seeds, he doesn’t know, nor will he ask. Traditions are just habits on a larger scale, even if the Alpine Coalition decided the best route to the Pyrenees was to cut across the Flemish Sea.)

None of them speak of it though; not to him, not to Ruth, not even to each other. Sometimes he finds it downright shameful, that the names of all the ones he’d lost in the During go unspoken and unsung, but there it is. And he has Ruth, whom he knows would listen if only he would ( _could_?) ask, and most days that’s enough. It has to be, because these days it’s all he really has.

Tragic, then, how it means that he has more than most.

They were his people -- still are, still will be until the day he dies (until the day _they_ die) -- and sometimes their silence cuts him. Especially on The Day ( _that_ day, the day that no one celebrates). _That_ day Jed plants himself at the top of the heath and gets drunk as a skunk on homebrew; _that_ day Mindy takes a long walk down to The Point and back, barefoot like its some damned fool penance; _that_ day Dimitri does something with candles and off-key songs down along the beach. _That_ day his people all have their own ways of marking time, and doubtless there are other observances that he doesn’t know about -- and that cuts deeper, still, because they’re still _his_ people, damn it. If he doesn’t know, then no one knows, and if there’s one thought that still has the power to leave him cold, its the thought of his people out there, alone and silent, hanging separately when there is absolutely no need for it.

(Its the fact that, after all they’ve been through together, they can’t even turn to _each other_ for anything remotely personal. Habit, he knows, and damn but that’s a bitter pill because -- how much of their habits now are really his own damn fault?)

Granted, Jed has invited him along before (Mindy hasn’t; Dimitri knows better), but at least with them he knows just enough to know when Jed’s waded out past his tolerance; when Mindy’s been gone too long; what it means when Dimitri’s voice gives out inside the final chorus. He knows enough to know how to take care of the ones that let him, if only because obedience is habit, too; even if the chain of command has been severed along every link and now its a wholly different tie that binds them.

(But not so different, then, for all of that. Still the heaviest of the chains he wears is that list culled from the ranks of his now-defunct command, the names of every last person he had been responsible for, Before, During, and After. Never mind that After consists so far only of that damned fool Alton, who stayed just long enough to fool them into thinking he was one of them before up and setting sail for the Americas, never to be seen again. He’s still the final entry on Harry’s list, the final star named when Harry glances heavenward the night after The Day, but at least there’s Ruth who knows exactly what he’s doing when he takes that lonely walk, and has their bed all nice and warm for him when he returns.)

The fact remains, Harry spent too long in charge to ever be truly free from the burdens of command. His people understand this, for better or worse, but its not like he can just order them to heal and even if he could, he’s not even sure it would be his right to do so, anyway. He has Ruth, and Ruth has him, and for that he thanks his lucky stars (there aren’t many of them, what with his sky so chock full of memories, but then at least they’re easy to find), and his people have the village (full of strangers that have become family and family that work so hard at being little more than strangers, but still all a community, for what it’s worth) and their village has the Widdale Co-op, and a wireless that reaches all the way to the Isle of Dartmoor. And London it isn’t, Utopia it isn’t, but then _Dys_ topia it isn’t, either. Not by a long shot. Rather it’s just simply home; more importantly its _their home_ , now, and for all of that -- _for all of that_ \-- Harry still has room to think--

There are worse retirements.

But nine years on and he can’t help but notice that no matter how radically different his life is now, still so many things remain oddly (comfortingly; _infuriatingly_ ) the same. The sky is still blue, the grass is still green, and they are still all their own worst enemy. Maybe one day the rest of them will realize this, will stop regretting their own survival now that they have time enough to dwell on it properly, will realize that _life_ is the best memorial they can give the world that was in the dawn of this new After.
    
    
    “Harry? Are you coming to bed anytime soon, or should I not wait up for you?”

Until then, Harry will just have to lead by example. Fortunately for him, he’s had ample practice.
    
    
    “Just a minute. These lamps won’t shut themselves, you know.”

After all, it’s one of his best habits.

 

- _fin_ -

  


**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from the novella of the same name (alternatively titled _Wild England_ ) by Richard Jefferies, first published 1885. It is currently part of the public domain and can be read via Project Gutenberg.


End file.
